Awareness sessions, cleanliness and quality monitoring to be organised
Rattled by the frequent ‘hygiene raids’ by Health authorities and municipal officials on eateries in several places in the State, the Kerala Hotel and Restaurant Association has decided to observe August as a ‘hygiene month.’
“We are asking our members to give top priority to cleanliness of the restaurant premises, hygiene in cooking and use of quality ingredients,” Moideenkutty Haji, association president, told The Hindu.
During the month, the staff of restaurants, particularly those from outside Kerala, would be sensitised to the hygiene standards. Awareness sessions would be held for staff and owners. A hygiene monitoring squad of the association would randomly inspect the eateries.
Drops stir plan
Mr. Moideenkutty said the association had earlier planned to go on an indefinite Statewide shutdown of all eateries in protest against the raids by the Health Department authorities and officials of the municipalities and Corporations on the restaurants. The strike plan has now been dropped.
He alleged that the raids had not followed any standard criteria or norms. The officials simply seized allegedly stale food and gave wide bad publicity to the eateries. This was unfair and showed the entire industry in poor light.
He said the Food Safety authorities, on the other hand, had their own definition of stale food and had a set of criteria for hygiene.
Black sheep
He claimed that, like in any industry, there were black sheep in the restaurant sector and these few were bringing bad name to the industry. He noted that there were around a million workers in the hotel and restaurant industry in the State.
Close to a half of them were migrant workers, mainly from Bengal, Assam and Odisha.
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